Pretty much the same as the Songs: Ohia debut, just a little worse. There's less exciting moments and there's more of the already limited runtime dedicated to purely acoustic songs, which just kind of bores me. Declarer is cool but besides that I struggle to form any strong opinions on it.

A fair bit better than Meditations! This one is both a lot more electronic, but also a lot more experimental and textural. I vastly prefer that style of ambient and I think Sufjan's execution is solid. It's not an all time work, definitely not, but it's a good series of vignette with some nice sound design moments.

Insanely middle of the road release. Nothing about this piqued my interest and ends up being some of the least interesting ambient I've heard. All of these songs just kind of feel like very dramatic washes of soft synth chords with occasional looping or electronic flares. It's not bad and it works for being sufficient background music, but trying to give this anything beyond the most passive attention would be difficult for sure.

It's so short and so limited in it's scope that I can't really rate it any higher than this. However, it's very good, and a super emotional sound. It lives in the same blend of Ambient Pop and Indie Folk that Carrie & Lowell established, and each of these songs are consistently great executions of that sound.

It's actually not terrible, the auto tune is just kind of annoying. I don't really have a vendetta against auto tune like some people do (although that's kind of an outdated / less common viewpoint), but I don't like it in when it feels out of place; this is one such case. I think that the instrumentals are decent, especially on the first song, but still not good enough to offset the oftentimes grating vocals.

Yeah, not really that great. It's good, but it feels kind of overrated. I think that the contrast between the hazy electronic production mixed the crisp and almost distorted drumming is really cool, but that's the only thing that really stood out to me. The usage of samples is also pretty neat but nothing revolutionary; they honestly end up feeling buried a lot of the time. I just generally feel like these songs really run together and don't really have much of an identity on a ... read more

Another decent addition to Mac's catalog in the same style of Salad Days. Everything I could say about this would largely be repeating my thoughts on 2 and Salad Days, but the general idea is that it's a nice set of songs but nothing amazing.

It's cool enough, just a little on the boring side. It leans a lot more into the type of sound that I described as being less interesting on my review for Didn't It Rain. It's really stripped back and while that sound is cool, it can just be kind of boring and difficult to both distinguish from track to track or have the stamina to listen to a full album of. I don't dislike it, but it's definitely not great.

A really desolate record. I'm kind of inclined to rate this higher for how well the last three songs close it out, but the middle and beginning are a lot less interesting. Still good, but they mostly come off as decent but repetitive and simultaneously slow Alt-Country. I think the second half of the album does a great job at bringing in more electric instrumentation, and even though that technically adds more to the sonic palette, it ultimately feels even more sparse than the more ... read more

Pretty boring, if I'm being honest. I like ambient, but this is definitely an extreme of the genre and it reaches a point where I'm not really a fan. It's highly textural and it sacrifices a lot of melodic and harmonic interest, which is fine and conceptually interesting, I just find it kind of boring on here specifically. I couldn't recall any specific moments even if the general atmosphere was nice enough.

(thank u for the rec gabe... im not a fan though ☹️)

It's a slight stylistic shift into a more Folk or Psychedelic Pop sound, but it's nothing that better or worse than his previous output. I prefer the Jangle Pop from his first two albums, but I don't dislike this at all. It's cool at a lot of points but at the end of the day this has a higher tendency to both drag and not use it's longer runtimes that effectively with a lot of these songs being very loop adjacent.

Not the most interesting ambient or plunderphonics, but I had a nice time. It takes a minute to build up any real cool instrumentation and the more ambient house sections don't pop up until the backhalf of the album. This album definitely works a lot better in the background, I found myself bored when trying to listen actively but I found it a fair amount better in the background. Regardless, it's a fine record but nothing deserving of as much acclaim as it's usually awarded.

Pretty much exactly the same as the previous album. There's slight differences and slight improves and detractors when comparing the two, but it's just splitting hairs. Everything I said about the last one could be applied here. tldr: It's cool but a little samey.

Definitely set the precedent for the 2010's Bedroom Pop sound. This album is a really short but very nice time, it's largely pretty consistent and enjoyable. It can start to feel like the same song 11 times, but it's all fairly decent although some songs are better than others.

I haven't heard much outright Chamber Music, so this was pretty cool. It's obviously on the minimalist side of things which is definitely evident in the way the compositions stretch out, but it's definitely not as passive as other minimalist compositions. I think opener Fratres is amazing and I love the back and forth between violin and piano, and the two part closer title track Tabula Rasa was also great with the more active first movement being a highlight from this project. ... read more

I like this a fair amount! It's definitely limited by it's scope and overall restricted ambition, but for what it is, I really like it. I think the organ is a beautiful instrument and it taking the center stage on this LP is a great use that I've never really heard before. It doesn't blow me out of the water, but it's a nice listen.

Very nice city pop, but it definitely can fall into the trap of just having one sound. It does have some variation, mainly with Hey Reporter!'s more Jazz Rock sound, but almost all of this record can be described with the same two or three genres. Not to say that diminishes the quality or execution of those styles on here, but it can get a little indistinguishable between track to track, even if each song is amazing in it's own right. A little bit less than the sum of it's parts, ... read more

Surprisingly, this album and Alpha are actually on par. They set out to do different things, but the core ideas are still present and at a consistent level of execution. On one hand, this album is probably the objectively better choice. It's way more mature in it's overall vibe, the palette is more complex, the songs are more structured and varied, etc. However, this album can lean a little too into the Ambient side of things for me; my favorite parts of Alpha were the New Age-y ... read more

Nice minimalist stuff, but not always my thing. Out of the very few minimalist releases I'm familiar with I far and away prefer the ones that are largely made up of one movement and focus on more acoustic instrumentation. Granted, this album has both of those aspects, but the inclusion of the odd synth is just kind of annoying and ruins the atmosphere. I also don't love the instrumental layering at points, it feels almost a little gaudy, which the occasional synths obviously ... read more

A pretty weird release that almost entirely consists of Fripp's heavily reverb'd guitar over Eno's glitchy instrumentals. Most of the time these songs play out like one extended guitar solo over electronic backdrops that change and evolve at a glacial pace, which is cool, but of course limited. The soundscapes are pretty beautiful and it serves for an interesting listening, but it's definitely nothing of significance in my opinion.